Software Bugs and Complexity

Subject: Software Bugs and Complexity
From: Dan Emory <danemory -at- primenet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 13:19:01 -0800

I recommend to you the following article, found in today's LA Times. You can find it at:
http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/20001127/t000113753.html

No 'Silver Bullet' for Software's Growing Complexity
Industry and society suffer when design bugs eat up worker hours and users who don't get with the program fall behind.
By GARY CHAPMAN

Here's a relevant extract from the article:
==============================
On the user end, repeated experiences with software glitches tend to narrow one's use of computers to the familiar and routine. Studies have shown that most users rely on less than 10% of the features of common programs such as Microsoft Word or Netscape Communicator. It takes a high tolerance for frustration and failure to explore beyond the boundaries of one's own comfort level. This adds to the exasperation of tech-support personnel, who often don't understand why users are reluctant to venture into the unfamiliar features of a program. It also calls into question how much money and energy we spend on new software features that most people don't use or even know about.
"This is just a national scandal, this problem with software complexity and unreliability," says Leon Kappelman, director of the Information Systems Research Center at the University of North Texas in Denton. "No one should have to put up with computers being so unreliable or so difficult. We don't put up with this with any other product we use."
Across the country these days, community and national leaders are talking about such issues as the "digital divide," the severe shortage in technically skilled workers, massive investments in education to increase the skills of young people and those willing to be retrained and how high salaries in tech fields are transforming neighborhoods.
But few people are talking about how to make technology easier to use. There's a universal assumption that people will have to adjust to the rampant, irrational and escalating complexity of a hyper-technologized society--or fall into the ranks of the losers and the ignorant. This split is likely to characterize modern life in the 21st century.
==================================
The two software products cited above are prime examples
where, for most users, on-line help is the sole source of
information about how to use the product.

QUIZ
Choose below the explanation(s) for this phenomenon:

1. Most users are denizens of that netherworld known as the "post-literate,"
and you can't expect much more from them?
2. On-line help and "Wizards" which cater to the post-literate mind-set are abject
failures, not only for the post-literate, but also for users who do not suffer
from that malady?
3. Most users don't need the 90% of features they don't use?
4. The TWs who wrote the on-line help didn't understand the
unused 90% of features well enough to document them
adequately?
5. Software should be designed for the post-literate, thus the 90%
of unused features should be deleted from the product?
6. It's the software design stupid?
7. The dirty little secret is that most TWs who document software
have no in-depth understanding of the products they're
writing about, and even less understanding about the disciplines
in which those products are used.
8. All of the above?
9. Other?


====================
| Nullius in Verba |
====================
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory -at- primenet -dot- com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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